Testimony (for Michael Brown, 1996-2014)
Four hours I lay there,
sun at my back,
my blood running a country
mile between the pavement
and the crown of my head.
Officer, no ambulance ever came.
It took a long time to cover my body.
There are politics to death
and here politics performs
its own autopsies. My aunties
say things like, Boy big, black as you.
Then, the prosecution rests.
My neighbors never do. They lose
sleep as the National Guard parades
down Canfield. I heard my blood
was barely dry. I heard there were soldiers
beating their shields like war cries,
my boys holding hands
through the tear gas. Heard my mother
wandered the streets,
her body trembling
between a prayer
and a fist. I heard a rumor
about riots got started.
Officer, I heard that after so much blood,
the ground develops
a taste for it.
Copyright Credit: Hafizah Geter, "Testimony (for Michael Brown, 1996-2014)" from Un-American. Copyright © 2020 by Hafizah Geter. Reprinted by permission of Wesleyan University Press.
Source: Un-American (Wesleyan University Press, 2020)